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The Watering Hole; Thursday August 4 2016; “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall – think of it, always.” (Mohandas K. (Mahatma) Gandhi)

I suspect it’s no mystery to anyone with a functioning mind that the current Republican Candidate for POTUS — Donald J. Trump — is little more (or less) than a greedy egomaniacal narcissist, a racist, a bigot, a misogynist, and a largely uninformed xenophobic blowhard. Trump is, in fact, most certainly the most uninformable — therefore the most unpredictable and most dangerous — candidate for POTUS that has ever reached the pinnacle upon which he now roosts. I suppose I’m in good company when I note that I’ve listened to him, laughed at him, even mocked him from time to time over the last year, but then it happened: the straw(s) that broke my camel’s back rained down as if driven by a lightning bolt. They were, collectively, all those verbal assaults that the Con Man (Trump) tried to use to insult and diminish the most honorable Kahn family, all because Khizr Khan eloquently spoke a haunting Truth at the Democratic National Convention.

My original intent here was to quote and post links to the many insanities Hair Drumpf has spoken over the last year (and especially in the last week), and then address them, each and all, via quotes from people who have, in the past, addressed much the same issues with both intelligence and with that enviable sensitivity that seems so absent in today’s America. But in the shadow of recent political blather, I decided instead to simply post answers — responses — to similar questions/statements uttered by others in past years — responses which continue to stand the test of time, due mainly to the intelligence, the sensitivity, the caring, and the experiences underlying them — all stuff that Drumpf would have nothing to do with no matter the situation.

So — Following are what I consider to be legitimate responses to statements Trump has made in the public eye. As you read them, think Drumpf on stage, with mic (along with bad hair, red tie from China, dark suit from Mexico, etc.), and as you read the responses, imagine Trump’s reaction if said responses were aimed solely at him.

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

“Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.”

“It is a tragic mix-up when the United States spends $500,000 for every enemy soldier killed, and only $53 annually on the victims of poverty.”

“To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.”

“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.”

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

“When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.”

“The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.”

“Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

“A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.”

“There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don’t have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.”

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”

“I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream — a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man’s skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence . . . of the good people.”

“Cowardice asks the question – is it safe? Expediency asks the question – is it politic? Vanity asks the question – is it popular? But conscience asks the question – is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.”

“True compassion, is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

Each and all of those wise answers/responses are the words of one man, the man who also spoke the following, live, to the tens of thousands gathered at the Civil Rights March on Washington DC, August 28, 1963:

“Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: – ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'” ~Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

That, folks, is NOT at all the way Donald J. Trump sees the world or has EVER seen the world — or his role in it. Try the word ‘opposite’ — it’s a far better fit.

Meanwhile, a summation:

“A time comes when silence is betrayal. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak out with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.”(Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Here’s a man who brags about everything. He believes he is the greatest of everything in all categories. Certainly, he knows he’s not the richest man in the world. But, at several billion dollars he’s among the richest people in the world.

Just a guess on my part, but I’d not be at all surprised if, on his tax returns, there might be revealed some financial connections with Russia/Russians that he thinks, as a POTUS candidate, are better left buried.

I wouldn’t be surprised at a Russian connection either. However, I think he’s proud of that connection. I think he actually wants us to know that connection; because shows how tough he is to be able to do business with the most notorious strongman of them all (Putin).

I also agree. And I think someone who had a look at his taxes said it would reveal he’s not as wealthy as he thought. And David Cay Johnston says he probably paid little or no tax due to all the deductions and tricks available to someone in real estate. IOW, releasing his taxes would reveal he’s been lying to everyone about a lot of things.

And, yes, the Russians are probably in there. Notice in his denial he only says that he has no investments in Russia. He doesn’t say how much some Russians have invested in him. And, no, the fact that he is being audited does not preclude him from releasing his previous years’ taxes. Even if they were auditing his seven most recent years, he could still release the ones from before that. If he does release them, because of their complexity and the number of pages they take (hundreds, if not over 1000), he’ll do it so close to the election that nobody, not even DCJ, could go through them in time to tell voters what they should know.

As I mentioned to Frugal, I’m not sure he’s hiding soley from the Russian connection (which I agree with you; it probably exists). As for shrewdness in the timing of releasing the forms; so far I don’t see a lot of political saavy coming from this campaign.

He absolutely has done business with the mob. They control the type of concrete business he used to build his hotels and casinos. In fact, the high cost of that concrete was one of the factors in why the casinos went broke.

All the righty’s at work are acting exactly like they did in 2012 with Romney. This is the fourth rich son of privilege the Rs have run in a row, and I keep telling them Trump can’t win because he can’t run the table on all the swing states, which is the only way he can get to 270. With the Libertarian Party getting close to 12%, he may even lose a red state or two.